BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
UPDATE: Naima Fine Fine presents the live premiere of Leagues of Breaking Light at the Melbourne Fringe this September 30!
When Naima Fine Fine and I first started talking, a series of terms came into the conversation: ecology, science communication, climate change activism, sound art, experimental composition, flowers…
The more I explored Naima’s work, the longer and more intriguing this list became.
Naima is an Australian composer who is rolling all of these ideas into one with Leagues of Breaking Light. As much of an activist as she is an artist, Naima is using her interest in the environment and social justice to produce this work, which translates scientific research data into an aural experience.
Have a little listen before you learn about how it all comes together:
Naima, tell us a bit about your involvement in social activism in the past, and the topics that mean the most to you.
I attended my first rally before I could walk. My parents instilled in us a total respect for nature and an understanding of social and environmental injustice in the world, and a drive to do our best to change it.
After high school, I got through half a composition degree at the Queensland Conservatorium before I was off to the Jabiluka anti-uranium mine blockade. I spent the next few years going to uranium, gold mine and forest blockades, and bicycling 4000km+ on an anti-nuclear awareness tour!
Over the years, I’ve continued participating in protests ranging from climate change and anti-logging to Reclaim the Night and refugee rights rallies. These days at rallies, I’m often found playing with Riff Raff Radical Marching Band – an open-membership all-standards protest band.
Why do you feel it’s the responsibility of artists to contribute to conversations about issues such as climate change?
I think it’s incumbent on everybody to contribute as much conversation and action as each of us are able (and I’m especially looking at government, policy-makers, and industry in this statement!).
Most artists are extremely financially precarious; but on the other hand, being outspoken perhaps carries less risk to our potential earnings than it does in, say, the retail sector. I think artists have a responsibility to use that privilege to the maximum benefit for a just and sustainable world.
Artists can present and provoke in really curious ways through our individual work – and we can also affect change via collective action. For example, the group of Melbourne and Triennial-exhibiting artists recently who engaged in a series of very public and media-savvy creative actions calling on the National Gallery of Victoria to terminate its security contract with Wilson Security, the same company that was contracted to work at the offshore detention camps. They succeeded!
In our current system, change is best affected through significant financial or commercial pressure. So as well as contributing to change as individual artists, let’s think big, work collectively, and see what we can do!
Leagues of Breaking Light enters this particular conversation in a musical way. Why did you want to create a work centred around ecological climate change research?
When I applied for uni, I planned to do degrees in music and environmental science at the same time, but I had to choose! I chose music, but spent the next 15 years switching my study, work, and attention back and forth; but was never satisfied for long.
I started composing again about eight years ago, but of course got restless soon enough. I needed to try to find a practice that I felt contributed something practical to issues I’m passionate about as well as fulfilling me ecologically and musically. I gradually realised that using composition to express ecological data might be what I needed.
In 2015, I had the opportunity to do this when I got the great privilege of being an artist-in residence in rural China as part of arts-activist duo Fine Fine Small Mountain.
I was really fortunate to find a newly completed study called ‘Climate-driven change in Himalayan Rhododendron phenology’ by Dr Robbie Hart. He’d done two years of field work on the incredible mountain that dominated the skyline at the studio. Dr Hart is a wonderful person who has been enthusiastic and generous about me interpreting his work from the moment I contacted him. And so Leagues of Breaking Light began.
Let’s get scientific. Tell us about the techniques you used to transfer this research data into sound.
The study examines the life events of 10 species of rhododendron flowers with relation to climate change. I used four different approaches, each exploring a different aspect of translation, and each forming one section of the work.
The first approach is a traditionally notated sonification of one graph of all 10 species. I created a rigorous conversion formula to change the statistical information into musical information, and I applied that to the data in the graph. I chose an appropriately sized stave, superimposed it over the graph, and translated the results onto manuscript.
In the second approach, I was less strict. I was exploring the gestures of the data rather than accurately translating it, and did 10 separate works. For each species, I eyeballed two to four graphs representing the same information in different ways, and interpreted them together freehand onto manuscript.
The third approach was much more loose and is again 10 separate works. I was interested in putting the interpretive work into the performer’s realm. So I drew detailed botanic drawings of each species’ flower, and these are presented as graphic scores. There are no interpretation guidelines, but performers may read the drawings as is, or with a graph overlaid.
The fourth approach is one work. It’s the least ‘scientific’ and explores a different aspect of translation. In Dr Hart’s work was a quote I loved, describing what the flowers on the mountain looked like, by a European botanic explorer/author in 1926. I set the quote for two tenor voices in a traditionally notated score. The tenors sing in unison, but not: the same quote and the same melodic line, but one sings Mandarin and one sings English.
How has your work been received by the scientific community so far?
Well I’m very blessed that Dr Hart has been so enthusiastic and generous from our first contact. He said in an early email that he was excited by my concept because he’d spent a lot of time thinking about visualising data, but not much thinking about auralising it.
Aside from that, the work is practically unpremiered – just the studio engineer, musicians, and I have heard it in full so far. I’m excited to present a paper and recorded excerpts at the Ecoacoustics Congress in Brisbane in late June, so will hopefully get some valuable feedback and publicity from scientists there. When I release the album, I’ll certainly be reaching out to the scientific community, and I hope it will be received with a similar open-minded curiosity and enthusiasm as Dr Hart’s.
What do you hope will be the long-term impact of your artistic work? Is it about building awareness, shaping public opinion, something personal?
I hope to facilitate appreciation of earth and evolution’s unimaginably complex beauty, and greater understanding of the cascading effects that seemingly small environmental changes have on these finely tuned systems. By provoking thought and introducing valuable knowledge to different communities, I hope to empower people to reach out across educational and disciplinary divides and create stronger, larger, and more diverse alliances to affect change.
You’ve chosen to crowdfund this project. How have you found public support for this work so far, and why would you encourage others to donate?
This is my first crowdfunder, and so far most of the support comes from those already in my communities – the new music community, people connected with the residency, and my family. It’s really humbling. I got one completely anonymous donation which is exciting but system isn’t set up for me to be able to send them a thank you! So thank you, lovely person!
Encouraging folks to donate is always awkward. I’d just say this work is unusual in that if you don’t like the music, you might like my botanical drawings as visual artworks, or the interview with Dr Hart as an education resource, or some other aspect. So take a punt and support it if you can. Oh – and it’s tax deductible!
And finally, why does this project mean everything to you?
So many reasons! Leagues of Breaking Light was a huge watershed for me. It was the beginning of me synthesising my ecological, activist, and composing backgrounds into one creative practice. It’s the largest body of work I’ve created so far. And it’s the most exploratory music I’ve written, so it’s opened new doors for my compositional techniques and opportunities. It’ll be my first release, so I’m really chuffed to have incredible musicians playing for me, and be creating a multi-media album with not just music but images, links, and an interview with Dr Hart.
Finally, it’s my most significant contribution from an arts perspective to building bridges, communicating important science, and strengthening connections for change.
Leagues of Breaking Light has raised more than $4,000 in its Australian Cultural Fund campaign. There’s still more time for you to help Naima reach her crowdfunding goal – visit the website to show your support.
Images supplied.
